Building Autonomy in Continual Improvement

Six Sigma

You just became the proud owner of the title “Lean (Six Sigma) Black Belt” (or any other color for that matter)? Congratulations! But what, in fact, does this exactly mean? In any case, it means you invest in yourself or the organization you work for invests in its people. Good for you. But a lot of side notes can be made about the recent, totally uncontrolled proliferation in belt colors, titles, certificates and certifying organizations related to Lean and/or Six Sigma. Does such type of Lean certification actually imply a certain competence, or is it a fool’s bargain?(more…)

Nu.nl (the most popular Dutch news site) heads: “Warmest October 22nd ever”. At the same time, the comments speak about the insignificance of the headline as the 23rd of October 2003, for instance, the Netherlands saw a record cold temperature and we had snow. Is something really going on now as suggested by the heading, or is this just ballyhoo? Of course you also see this happening in organizations. We proudly announce something has been significantly improved but if we look closer, we see that the data that is being compared has been picked very selectively. Or after a few weeks or months, it turns out that the so-called improvements were apparently not so sustainable. Most companies lack the basic competency of interpreting data it seems.(more…)